Clarity East workshop

 Had a lovely day today at the Clarity East workshop with Janet Pring - we used the same woodland stencil set,  moon masks and  woodland animals stamp set all day.
The first card used the outer stencil - after taping the stencil down we created a landscape using the now traditional torn copy paper before stamping the deer. I used Stampin Up inkpads in night of navy and pear pizazz as my adirondack pads are sadly drying up, but borrowed Janet's espresso adirondack for the deer.
Our second card used both parts of the stencil, and practically every brown inkpad I could lay my hands on, and that was quite a few! We began with the inner stencil, and sponged ink around it to make a frame - I know I started with adirondack espresso, and I think latte, watermelon and butterscotch were the main others, but not sure by now.

 After finishing the frame, we carefully taped the outer stencil over the inked bit and added the landscape and whatever animals we felt like - I couldn't resist adding the owl. However carefully the stencils were lined up, I think everyone had a halo image by the time we had finished.............
I always take plenty of spare card with me, so had time to do another version while waiting for the stamps to get to me - basically the same colours, but this time I didn't ink round the edges of the card, and I did manage a smaller halo this time.
For the third card after lunch we used a gelli plate, but with inks rather than acrylic paints - I definitely prefer this effect, I may even be persuaded to get a gelli plate yet!

We used two colours of ink brayered onto the card and either dabbed with a sponge or spritzed with water before taking a print - we all had several pieces of card for this, as it was quite easy to put the card the wrong way and get the colour bands going the wrong way as it was quite difficult to see which way the stripes went.
After creating our basic background, we added the large moon mask and sponged round it, then created our torn paper landscape. The first one used caramel and cranberry inks as a base, and butterscotch and cranberry for the stamping. The foliage round the edges was a wild grasses stamp, stamped the right way up
at the bottom and upside down at the top.
For my second version I chose different colours, I know the green was juniper but can't remember what the dark purply blue was, sorry. This time I used part of the woodland inner stencil for the tree.

in the night garden

The challenge this month at craft-a-scene is to make your own garden - I decided in a rash moment to try a night-time scene.
The cottage and trees stamps came from Chocolate Baroque - I stamped the cottage first in black memento ink, masked it off and added the band of trees to the right. While the masks were in place,I added the moon mask and brushed distress inks in broken china, stormy sky and chipped sapphire over the sky, with a few touches of milled lavender. After removing the masks I added clouds using chipped sapphire and a piece of cut'n'dry foam.
Cottage and trees were coloured with watercolour pencils, then I used torn paper and cut'n'dry foam to make the lawns, using a ix of peeled paint, forest moss and bundled sage distress inks.
The flowers at the front are from Crafty Individuals - many thanks for the Facebook freebies! - I only used the top part of the stamp, stamping twice at different heights to create the flower border over the green inked lawn. For some of the flowers I used a waterbrush to remove some of the green ink, others I just coloured with pencils, and some I left green. Enough colour didn't come off as i wanted, so I added some dots of white gel pen, and then some clear wink of stella .
Edges were sponged with black soot before matting onto first matt silver then dark blue card before mounting onto a 7" square white card blank.

birds

 Sunday was craft club at Moira's again - a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.
We started (reluctantly in most cases)  by making an exploding box card - I did finish it, but it still needs something else  added, so will photo it once I've decided what that something is!
After the hassle of trimming, scoring, cutting and glueing that, we were all rather relieved to get to play with Moira's new stamps from Hobby Art and do some peaceful colouring in.
These were my two creations - the birds were supposed to be bluetits or great tits, but I haven't got the colours quite right - they were coloured using my favourite watercolour pencils and a water brush, and the edges of the card brushed with distress ink.

The slightly larger card was white originally, so the edges were also brushed with green to tone down the white against the cream card we used for stamping.

may tags

 The tag challenge for May was to use embossing folders- my main challenge was finding the darn things, which involved a fair amount of rummaging around! Needless to say, the one I was specifically looking for still hasn't surfaced..............I really do need to have a major sort out, although a pile of stamps that surfaced during the hunt are now on ebay,  one empty drawer now, so I suppose that is a  start.
The owl tag uses a Sizzix woodgrain folder - I embossed 2 tags, and inked them with tea dye and vintage photo distress inks. I had a spare owl after making my April tags, so cut down one of the embossed tags to make branches for him to sit on and hide behind. The cut outs were layered onto the base tag with glue dots
For my second tag I used a Tim Holtz die, and this was inked with a mix of broken china, shabby shutters and vintage photo inks and left to dry completely. Once it was dry the next day, I dabbed a versamark pad over the raided areas and embossed with a copper EP. The small tag was stamped using images from the mini  curiosities plate using tea dye and vintage photo - this was the one time I wished that I had a steampunk stamp! I also inked the tag with tumbled glass and shabby shutters before edging it with vintage photo and tying it to the large tag with a dull gold ribbon.